I would like to regale you with a cautionary tale of knitting needles and multi-tasking.

I’ve been crocheting now for about 5 years. The apartment is often littered with crochet hooks as I work on different projects throughout the day. In January I began knitting, which presents several challenges to this crocheter. I am a perfectionist ONLY when it comes to my crafts. I will tear out my creations many times before they are finished, and sometimes scrap projects all together, winding the yarn back into a ball. This is more difficult for me while knitting and I have mostly just made practice items until my skills are of a higher quality.

Also, where in crochet you can create anything using a single hook. In knitting you need at least a pair of needles and sometimes extra for things like cabling. I’ve mostly been using my grandmother’s knitting needles that I retrieved from my parents’ basement.

Currently I am working on leg warmers on a new pair of circular needles. I am making cables and using an extra double pointed needle to hold my stitches. This is where my story takes a turn towards the strange and perhaps nauseating.

Traditionally Ryan and I throw a Chinese New Year party for some of our friends here in Columbus. This year when the New Year rolled around I was down with the horrible ear infection I had for the whole month of January (and then some.) We had postponed it until this weekend and I was feeling pretty good Saturday morning.

I did some prep veggie work, cutting up broccoli and snapping the ends off of snow peas. For the average healthy person this is not a lot of work, for me it was a little fatiguing. So I grabbed my leg warmers and headed to the recliner to relax for awhile before finishing up by cutting the bok choi. Once I felt rested I stood up, and threw my yarn and things into the recliner until I returned with the tv tray I use to cut veggies on.

Note: this is not the recommended method of needle storage.

Returning with veggies in hand, I began to sit down in the recliner when I felt a sharp pain in the back of my thigh. It took me a fraction of a second to know something wasn’t quite right and I stood back up. I could immediately see a double pointed knitting needle hanging out of my shorts. I thought it was just stuck in the mesh and I thought, “huh, that didn’t feel good?” Ryan heard something along the lines of “ouch.”

I reached back to remove said needle from my shorts and encountered some resistance. That is when I realized that this very sharp and pointed needle was sticking in my flesh. Ryan was in the kitchen running water when I called to him, and when he shut it off I said “there is a knitting needle in my flesh.” I was strangely calm as he came over and looked at it. The sensation of pulling a needle out of my skin is something I hope to never experience again. We estimated that it was in at least 3/4 of an inch if not more, as I had pulled on it before Ryan came to remove it.

He cleaned it up, it oozed some clear liquid and bled a little bit, but over all it wasn’t too bad. I sat down and chopped up the bok choi. It wasn’t really until I had finished that task that it sunk in what had happened.

I had SAT on a knitting needle and it entered my flesh! I felt slightly traumatized. If I had been paying more attention to my knitting and hadn’t been focused on bok choi I’m sure I would have picked up my yarn and needles before sitting down, but normally sitting on a ball of yarn is not painful, crochet hooks have never pierced my skin.

I believe I have learned my lesson. And maybe it’s one you have to live to learn, but I hope to never experience it again.

As with many injuries and mishaps this could have been MUCH worse. I’m very grateful for my presence of mind to not sit completely down on the needle when I felt the pain. I’m also grateful that it chose the absolutely most meatiest part of my body to lance.

I hope that MY mishap will remind you that placing sharp needles in a chair is a very very VERY bad idea.

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5 Comments

I am going to rate this as a 6 on the “Ew ew ew” scale. The fact that it required assistance in removing adds to the squeamish factor. Ditto for the clear liquid ooze. Glad it did hit you in a relatively benign area, given the neighborhoods it could have affected.

Ouch! That reminds me of my experience in m yfreshman Home Economics class when I was sewing and the sewing machine needle went all the way through myright index finger. That was slightly nauseating too!

Your story reminds me of a time when, as a child of eight, I stepped on a sewing needle that was in the bedroom carpeting. I heard a snap but didn’t feel much. When I could only find half of the needle on the floor where I stepped, I checked the bottom of my bare foot. There was a red dot. It dawned on me that the other half of the needle was flush inside my foot. WAAA! I started to cry because I couldn’t get it out. My parents had company, but after realizing I couldn’t remove it myself, I had to interrupt my dad and we went to the ER for surgery to remove it. 😛 Icky story, but I only had 3 stitches – the only stitches I’ve ever had thus far. I am glad your story didn’t involve panic or hospitals. Be careful with those needles!

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The Pink Woobie is a handmade business focusing on the fun, soft, and colorful. Hand crocheted, knit, and spun items for you or your loved ones to enjoy. Looking for demonstration, teaching, and outreach opportunities.